While we will expect from a partner to solve our problems, fulfill his desires, fill the inner emptiness and generally give the meaning of our whole life, true love will remain for us ... inaccessible.
He (she) is it? Why is it so difficult to meet your "soul mate"? How to understand that this is really love? And do they really love me. Our whole life with dreams of great love is built around such issues. They disturb us, and we tirelessly set them for ourselves, and sometimes our partners.
In the age of consumption, when a romance in flowers and chocolate hearts is traded every year on February 14 and March 8, and sex is increasingly going into glossy magazines and sellers of intimate goods, love also becomes a consumer product. In a society where rapid results are quoted without application, win -win recipes and guarantees from any risks, we also involuntarily embed our love into the format of instant profitability: “You disappoint me - we
are less drawn to each other - everything, it's time to part!"We are waiting for love with passion
“When the first love subsides and the relationship becomes more even, many couples really break up,” confirms the family psychotherapist Inna Khamitova. -Many men and women are sure that love for real-this means to completely abide in a stream of passion. The pursuit of strong emotions is preferable to harmony, equilibrium in relationships, the desire to get closer to the world of your chosen one ”. Some may have an idea of love as a certain dependence, and akin to a narcotic.
I also have a thirst for a continuous search. “Thousands of new people come every day,” advertisements of one of the popular dating sites boasts. - And this means that there will always be a reason for a new meeting!»The possibility of quick viewing, unlimited casting of candidates creates the illusion that we will certainly find what has not been possible, this time.
“Dating on the Internet is a part of modern life, and in a sense they help out a modern person,” says psychotherapist Alexander Orlov. - On the other hand, they form in us a consumer attitude to love: as if we are in a supermarket, where there is a department of various partners. Our communication becomes more intense, the process of acquaintance is accelerated. The number of potential contacts is growing, but at the same time they become more brief, ephemeral ".
Why love is blind?
Alfried Langle is a doctor of medicine and philosophy, president of the International Society of Existential Analysis and Logotherapy (Gle-International).
“Love is the rest of Paradise on Earth. Lovers have no problems, in their hands all the forces of the world, they do not need a dream or food. And true love is different, it sees, it sees the being of man. Love, they say, blinds. Why? In love, I see a person as I wish to see him. I still know him so little that I fill everything with my desires.
I am always in love with my own performance. And this is what makes the love of paradise experience, because in my view there are no shadow sides. In another, we see his charm, attractiveness, eroticism. And on these carnations we hang our ideas about him ".
It is difficult for us to abandon the sky -high ideal
The image of a beautiful prince or a fairy -tale princess seems to still always live in our dreams, not embarrassed by everyday reality.
“It is necessary to abandon the ideal, perhaps a strict image of your partner in time, otherwise you can fall into a trap of your own errors,” Inna Hamitova is sure. - When life together begins, many do not stand a meeting with a real person. There are details that cannot but notice, but the ideal image of a lover prevents him from admitting that he is the same person as we are, and we may not like everything in him ”.
But how is it not all? After all, we dream of a great, endless and unconditional love! “But only God can love,” retreating from the world for the monastery walls, saying the spiritual paths say. So how to combine the love of a man and a woman with such an unattainable height?
And those who are looking for a couple, and those who have long been together - we all want true love: it seems to us the last chance to fully feel ourselves, give the meaning of our life. “The view of love has changed a lot since previous times,” says psychoanalyst Umberto Galimberti. “It seems that it has become the only sphere of life in which we can be himself, freeing from other roles with which society loaded us.”.
Desperately, more than ever, we have our hopes for love: that it will give everything that we lack, will arouse taste for life and will certainly lead to happiness. But are we ready for sacrifices for this purpose?
“The space of love is the only thing in which our“ I ”is not constrained by the rules and can turn out freely,” continues Umberto Galimberti. - Therefore, love contributes to the aggravation of our individualism. Today, men and women are looking for in her not so much relationships with another as the opportunity to realize their "I". So it turns out to realize ourselves, we need to love-and at the same time it is more difficult to love than ever. Since today we are looking for love through another person, indirectly, our own "I".
However, the thirst for self -realization is only for the sake of itself the nature of true love: born between two people, it changes both. Partners are fully revealed not only for themselves, but also for each other. The meeting of two gives birth to a third, new actor - their union, and this must be reckoned with. True love needs our patience, perseverance, clear consciousness and the ability to accept things as they are. True love is an effort, our bet with life itself. And this love always returns that we are invested in it.
To love really is.
American family psychotherapist Harville Hendrix in his book “How to achieve the desired love” described ten important steps to advance in the path of true love.